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A blogzine about eurorack modular synthesizers and musicMon, 12 Feb 2018 13:50:28 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3http://www.horizontalpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/icon2-55c223e7v1_site_icon-32x32.pnghorizontalpitchhttp://www.horizontalpitch.com
3232Chosen Waves 014: R Benyhttp://www.horizontalpitch.com/2018/02/chosen-waves-014-r-beny-cities-sleep-like-seeds/
http://www.horizontalpitch.com/2018/02/chosen-waves-014-r-beny-cities-sleep-like-seeds/#commentsWed, 07 Feb 2018 13:00:54 +0000http://www.horizontalpitch.com/?p=1676Austin Cairns, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, has been making music under the moniker R Beny for some time now. You probably have seen his videos around, as he is also an active youtuber. His name gets mentioned surprisingly often when talking about modulars and ambient music and been inspiring many people to follow a similar road as his own. The name is an homage to the Canadian photographer Roloff Beny, who travelled the world taking pictures of its buildings, landscapes and marvels. It was supposed to be a placeholder – Austin tells me in the interview – but then it kind of stuck. Probably – I would add – because it’s a very fitting name, but you’ll see what I mean, after a closer listen.

I first got in contact with R Beny after his album Cascade Symmetry came out. I had wanted to get back to writing for Horizontalpitch for some time, but never had found the motivation to do so. Only after listening to Cascade Symmetry something clicked. The album resonates with me on many levels, but I also think that his music is an essential listen for everybody.

While working on the interview, his latest album Saudade came out. Of course I didn’t want to scrap the old interview to make room for a new one, so this will be a double feature Chosen Wave!

R Beny: Music has been a constant throughout my life. I grew up with musicians in my family. My grandparents were bluegrass musicians and my mother played piano. I gravitated towards rock music and started playing in my early teens.

I’ve been involved with writing, recording and performing music for more than decade now, mostly playing guitar in various bands.

Several years ago, I hit a wall creatively and went through some personal turmoil, leading me to quit making music for nearly a year. I sold off most of my gear and didn’t really give a second thought to it.

Almost 3 years ago to the day, I bought a cheap synthesizer on a whim after a friend had brought one over. Something clicked. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had accumulated a small studio’s worth of gear and was making music again. Sculpting sounds on electronic instruments has added another layer of thinking and creativity that I was not achieving with the guitar. I had dabbled briefly with synthesizers and DAWs like Fruity Loops in the past, but never really “got it” until this point.

HP: what’s your story with the modular? How did you first find out about it and when did you know that you wanted to use one in your music?

RB: My first encounter with modular, that I can recall, was seeing a demo for Mutable Instruments Clouds on YouTube. I didn’t exactly understand what I was hearing or seeing, except that it sounded beautiful and beyond this world. This was just a few months after my initial plunge into electronic instruments. I’m sure I had seen or heard of modular synths in the past in passing, but this was the first time where it truly entered my consciousness.

I bought a small case and started building a system not too long after seeing that video and doing a bit of research.

Modular has been a revelation. Making an instrument that is completely your own within a set of certain parameters.

HP: what does “playing a modular” mean for you?

RB: Playing a modular can mean different things to me in different contexts. In the studio, it’s about patching, routing and signal flow. Experimenting with how audio and control voltage interact with each other. Building layers and loops. In a live setting, it’s about playing and exploring what patching you’ve done. Turning those layers and loops into music. Exploring your way from point A to point B to point C of the patch. As opposed to creating those points in the studio.

That’s my interpretation of it. I think what makes modular so great is that there are so many ways someone could interpret it and approach it. There’s no right or wrong.

HP: What’s your process when composing/recording your music?

RB: My composition/recording process isn’t exactly set in stone. For Cascade Symmetry, most of the tracks were composed in the same way. I would manually play [using a keyboard controller via MIDI-CV ed.] and record a melody or sound (often through an effect or multiple effects) one-by-one, as opposed to sequencing or looping them. After laying down the initial part, I would add more parts using the same method. I did a little bit of editing in the DAW, but only for fading in and out different loops. As a result, I feel like the album has a very loose and organic feel. There’s no clock or synchronization, except for a part or three here and there.

A lot of my work involves sequencing loops and using effects to build a track up linearly. I still appreciate that process of composition, but I think it’s important to be open to different processes.

HP: What was the process behind the creation of Saudade?

RB: I started working on Saudade (the album) around the time I started wrapping up Cascade Symmetry. I had been talking to the Belgium-based tape label Dauw about doing a release for them for quite some time. I wanted to change up my recording approach, while still fine-tuning the process I was working on with Cascade.

The impetus of Saudade (the album) was to add cassette tape loops to the modular equation. I commissioned Scott Campbell of Onde Magnétique to modify my Tascam Porta Studio 4-track cassette recorder. He added individual output jacks for each channel and a speed control. I commissioned Randall Taylor aka Amulets to make me several endless cassette tape loops of varying sizes, from about 5 seconds to 15 seconds. For Saudade (the track), I wanted to experiment in creating a polyrhythmic, off-kilter melody using different lengths of tape loops for each note. I recorded each note of the main melody (5 notes) to different tape loops of various lengths and let each play back and loop for a few minutes. I was very happy with the result. While I liked the original melody I had written for the track, this new version felt looser and more reflective. I built the rest of the track around this experiment. The original melody plays under these notes. There’s also 2 tracks of “flute” leads from the Novation Peak. I was trying to emulate a Mellotron on a Peak patch. I didn’t get close, but I liked this patch quite a bit. I used it on the album a few times. The track is rounded off with a simple bass line from Peak and granularlized version of the melody running through Clouds.

HP: The word “saudade” is said to be very hard to translate in another language, what does it mean to you?

RB: While making this album, the major themes I had in mind was nostalgia, loss, remembrance, and longing. I had recently taken a couple of road trips to a few spots I hadn’t been in a few years. As I spent some time in these areas, memories came rushing back. Times I had visited these places in the past with old friends and old relationships. People who I’ve drifted away from over the years. The feeling I got while these memories were rushing back was very melancholic. It was hard to describe or put into words. Like film flashing in your head, fading in and out.

I came across the Portuguese word “saudade” and felt an immediate connection to what I understand is the meaning of it. A “deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves”. That was the feeling I was trying to capture in the music and I don’t believe any English words portrayed that feeling in such a concise and powerful way.

HP: Many artists working with tape (like William Basinski or Marcus Fischer, two names two that come to mind) often state their musical work to be focused on the exploration of memory (among other things) and the fragility of the human existence (Fisher’s last album is even titled “Loss”). Do you think that there is something inherent to the medium that makes its connection to these themes so strong?

RB: I think there’s something to be said for the link between memory and tape. When you put something to tape, it’s not going to last forever. It will slowly start to age, erode, decay, fade…I feel that memory is much the same way. As time goes on, memories age and fade. That’s just part of the fragility of the human condition.

HP: About the track Cities Sleep Like Seeds (from Cascade Symmetry), how was it born? Where did the idea come from? Did you follow a specific process to create the track, or was your approach more instinctive/spontaneous

I have a notebook where I write down interesting words or phrases that often get used for track names. The line “cities sleep like seeds” came from a book of poetry, if I recall correctly. The line struck me as fascinating and stayed with me for a while. I knew I wanted to use it as a track title, but in this case I set out to create a song based on the line and what the line made me feel and think. I was trying to go for something very dream-like and introspective.

The process used to create the track was the one I used throughout the album. The first part recorded was a melody from Mutable Instruments Rings played through a Strymon El Capistan. You can hear the first note of the melody all alone at the beginning of the track. The second part is another melody from Rings through El Cap. This part is buried in the mix a bit. It’s there to weave in and out of the main melody. There’s a third Rings/El Cap part. This is the part that sounds kind of like a piano.

Those three parts make up the skeleton of the song. From there, there are two further Rings/El Cap parts. They are the string/pad leads. There’s a high lead and a low lead.

To round out the song, there is a bass part from the Novation Peak and a distorted drone near the end, also a Novation Peak.

I felt like this approach to recording was equal parts instinctive and spontaneous. Once I patched a Rings sound I liked, the initial recording/melody was spontaneously played. I wouldn’t have a set length, speed or melody…I would just try to play to whatever emotion I was feeling or trying to feel. Every part after the initial part was a little more instinctive. While still being recorded in the moment, there would be more thought as to how they would fit in with the other parts or how they could move the track along.

HP: There’s something almost “orchestral” in your music (for lack of a better word). Is that something you are actively trying to achieve or just the consequence of how you approach the instrument?

It’s possible that it’s a little bit of both. The way I approach the modular… I like making it sound like there’s an “orchestra” of instruments, all playing off of each other. I’m not necessarily trying to sound like an orchestra.

HP: You’re very active on Youtube posting videos of your patches, how does that activity relate to your album works?

My videos on YouTube and what ends up on my album works are ultimately very different. Usually my videos will tend to focus on a specific module or piece of gear, or a specific technique. They tend to be one-off performances, probably closer to what I play live. With my album works, there’s a little more care into the recording process. There’s more room to work on smaller details.

I enjoy both processes endlessly.

HP: Bonus question: the images from the film “lupine” seem like a perfect match to your music, tell us more about it, how was the film born? What was the artistic vision behind it?

The video for “Lupine” came about thanks to my friend Danny Kim (www.distortion.co). We wanted to shoot a video to promote my first album Full Blossom of the Evening. We talked about possibly making it a performance video, but ultimately ended up deciding to shoot footage of local nature to capture the feeling of the song.

The look and feel of the video is entirely Danny’s vision. I chose the locations (Big Basin Redwoods State Park and Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve in California) and then left it up to Danny to capture and edit what he felt was appropriate for the track. I was extremely pleased with how the video turned out. Those locations mean a lot to me and they tie a lot into the theme of that album.

Funny story, the shoot in Big Basin was plagued by mosquitoes. On top of having to carry heavy camera equipment, we had to constantly fight off mosquitoes for several hours. Another friend who was with us got it the worst. We saw him the next day and he was covered in red bumps! Never forget the bug spray!

For all of you who still visit this place from time to time: thanks a lot! You owned yourself our heartfelt gratitude! For everybody else: welcome to Horizontalpitch!

The last years have been quite a bit of a journey for all of us here (both metaphorically and literally speaking), so it’s only fitting that our first post after the break is one about a journey as well.

When I first saw one of Ann Annie’s Field Trip videos I was totally captivated (actually I should say hypnotised) by it. It’s such a simple, yet powerful idea and taking the synthesizer(s) out into the landscape is the perfect extension of Ann Annie’s musical approach. Episode 1 dates back to April 2017 , but it’s a very interesting one on many levels, and definitely worth watching again in case you already saw it. The whole field trip idea was initially intended to be just an experiment, but it turned out much better than imagined (as Ann Annie tells me before starting the interview), so more of these were made in the months that followed (and can be seen on Youtube here).

Like in many modular videos, we never see who operates the instrument, which mostly plays by itself, with little human intervention. One could argue that the modular is the actual instrumentalist, and the person who made the patch is the composer/director, but that is food for another article I guess. It’s interesting though that by literally taking it on a ride, Ann Annie does not only humanise the modular, but also makes it become protagonist of a little story. In these videos, the synth not only plays music, it also does things and goes places.

This Chosen Wave is structured a little bit different from previous ones, because the interview resulted into one long, continuous answer to my questions, so I’ll just reproduce it the same way here.

Ann Annie: My musical background began when I was quite young. I started learning Piano, training myself by ear. Eventually I decided to try out a few other instruments including guitar and traditional rock band instruments. By high school I was in a band regularly playing shows around Portland. During this time I took an interest in Modular and analog Synths. I was immediately captivated and spent hours each day drooling over the strange world of modular synths, however it always remained a pipe dream in my head. Upon leaving high school and moving to Denver I dedicated the entirety of my free time to continuing my study of Jazz theory. Still intrigued by analog synths and hardware synths I bought a few keyboards and various devices such as the Korg Minilogue and Volca Keys. At this point, a Mother 32 found its way into my hands. The Modular world felt so close yet so far away. That is until I sold all of my instruments save the Mother 32 and bought a Mutable Instruments Rings.

Playing and building a modular to me is one of the most personal experiences an instrument can offer. As each rack is different, with a single patch never powering up to be the same twice, I find it to be a beautiful contrast and battle of controlling chaos while guiding it into desired sound. The limitless experimenting and exploration makes it one of the most freeing experiences as a musician.

My recording and composing process usually consists of immersing myself completely into the modular. I often will start patching with a single particular sound or concept in my head and building from there. Often times the end result will be completely different than the beginning. I also will try to emulate natural instruments or sounds to create patches.

The idea to do Modular Field Trips came from watching R Beny on Youtube and falling in love with his ability to make organic and natural sounding atmospheres with such an alien and industrial instrument. I wanted to take this even further and place the strange machine in beautiful scenes of nature, showing the contrast of nature and industry.

The actual process of making the field trips begins in the bedroom creating a patch. For the first episode hadn’t completely worked out the logistics of powering the modular. Eventually I got impatient and frustrated and decided to just go for it. I have to credit luck, or maybe sub-conscious instinct for the musical relationship to the sea.

My albums are usually slightly different versions of my field trips and videos I’ve posted, although I’m trying to move into separating the two, as time allows. I describe the music I make as rather atmospheres and textures to reflect and inflict a mood. As I wrote for Modular Field [the label who released AnnAnnie’s full-length album Athmospheres Vol.1 ed.]:

Ambience reflecting nature and the contrast of synthesized music, Under many atmospheres, flowing together, far apart, While running through the creation of worlds in between sound and emotion, Beautifully dancing with each other, colliding and warping, loosely like a dream, textures and rhythms that elicit a mood.

My Jazz background has greatly helped my improvisational skills, during my modular performances I am almost completely improvising. The only pre-determined composition is the concepts of where I’d like to head. Although I find one of the greatest beauties of the modular world to be the ability to let it take itself where it wants to go. This feeling of being simply a guide, never fully in control is something I find to be beautiful yet frustrating at the same time. A lesson in patience and letting go.

Ann Annie recently released a full-length album titled Atmospheres Vol.1 on the German label Modular Field

Cover photo courtesy of the artist

]]>http://www.horizontalpitch.com/2018/01/chosen-waves-013-ann-annie-modular-field-trip-ep-1-tidal-ambience-with-mutable-instruments-rings-moog-mother-32/feed/2The Modular Soundhttp://www.horizontalpitch.com/2016/09/the-modular-sound/
http://www.horizontalpitch.com/2016/09/the-modular-sound/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2016 12:00:43 +0000http://www.horizontalpitch.com/?p=1601You’ve all probably seen it by now, Behringer has jumped into the synth market and is about to release a polyphonic analogue keyboard synth. This would be a totally unrelated story, if not for one sentence by Richard Devine, who, in the first teaser video, describes this new synth with the words: “It sounds very modular”.

On one hand, this is a clear sign that the modular synth has become so popular that we are starting to use it to describe how other instruments sound, but there’s more to that. When the above mentioned teaser video first appeared on Facebook, people reacted to Devine’s assertion in a mixed way. Many were pointing out that the modular doesn’t really have a sound of its own, it being a “blank canvas” on which you can create whatever you want. I too, found it almost funny that somebody would say that, but I felt that simply stating that the modular doesn’t have a sound of its own, was a bit of a simplistic answer, so I started to dig a bit deeper.

Before I get into any of this, let me mention another Facebook anecdote. At one point somebody on the Muff Wiggler Facebook group wrote a short post saying: “Want to be different with your sound from other wigglers? Simple, don’t use Rings and/or Clouds….”. The post was not meant to spill hate on those modules, but more about many modular synth jams/tracks sounding the same. According to the poster, this was largely due to many people using the same modules. A long and (sometimes fruitless) discussion arose, during which a couple of interesting points were raised. One of the most interesting ones – for the context of this article – was, that you can use these modules and make something that will not easily be linked to them, but many people just haven’t spent enough time with their gear to really get beyond the more superficial uses. If played more superficially, certain modules tend to have a very recognizable sound, which might explain why a lot of modular music indeed sounds similar. So this opens up another question: is the modular’s “sound” just the product of it still being a relatively young instrument? After all it’s a very complex machine and one that keeps evolving and mutating, this makes it harder to develop your own sound, your own artistic voice.

So I started to talk to some people who know their part about sound and modulars. The first thing I did was to get in touch with Richard Devine himself. After all, he was the one that made me want to write this article in the first place. I asked him how he would define the modular sound, and this is what he said to me:

To me the modular sound is something that is organic and changing constantly, even if you play a repeating single note with an analog oscillator you will hear slight changes and fluctuations. Then take this idea and multiply the outcome when you use a larger system with other analog and digital hybrid modules. Patching them into each other creates this interactive electrical network. The patch becomes this ever changing larger entity that evolves and mutates. The sound is not exact but always slightly drifting, unpredictable, and moving.

This is a very good point. The very nature of the modular, it being this complex system with a tendency towards chaos and instability, must indeed reflect on the sounds it makes.

To expand on this, I went and collected some additional opinions on the matter, trying to cover as much ground as possible. I asked film sound designer, composer and field recordist Tim Prebble (who also runs the highly recommended blog musicofsound.co.nz), disquiet.com/Junto creator and blogger Marc Weidenbaum, musicians Joseph Fraioli aka Datach’i and Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, Italian synth guru Enrico Cosimi and modular video master Ben “DivKid” Wilson. Here’s their take on the matter:

Tim Prebble:

For me, I am as much interested in modular ‘sound’ as modular ‘synth’ in that I started my modular primarily as a processor of sounds – like an extraordinary outboard studio rack. As it has developed, the possibilities have grown until it now feels infinite, but one truth remains: it is the person involved who shapes its aesthetic. Two people given the same modules & patch will create entirely different sounds. This is important to me. At first a vital part of its attraction was the rawness and expressive power of its sound. But I also sensed a danger: modular synths are so powerful they can easily subsume the human.

Marc Weidenbaum:

Big picture I’d say my hope is you can’t always recognize a modular synthesizer when listening, because it is so varied in what it can accomplish. Modular synths are so rich with potential, it feels weird to use a word like “it” to encapsulate them. Especially when you get all those digital modules going — not just digital oscillators, but more complicated units like sequencers and so forth — it might arguably be indistinguishable from music you’d make on an iPad or a laptop. In addition, some of the most interesting work done with modulars sees them as part of a larger whole, combining them with software CV and with virtual modules, with Monomes, and serving as processing units for guitar, voice, and other external sources. Anyhow, to get back around to your question — and putting aside obvious things like specific modules with recognizable sonic signatures — I’d say that modular synths lend themselves particularly to a kind of exploratory, less-controlled experimental approach. This sort of approach reveals itself while the performance is going on: you start off in one place and end up in another. When I hear a hint of the weird that develops within the flow of a piece, it pricks up my ear and makes me wonder: modular?

Joseph Fraioli (Datach’i):

I don’t really think there is such a thing as a modular “sound” and to me that’s the best thing about it. A modular synth (of any format) can be designed specifically to the user’s ideas and work flow and while certain processes may be the same from user to user, the outcome is always different, as the users have such a fine amount of control over how the instrument behaves. So to me that question is akin to: “is there such thing as a guitar “sound”?”, the instrument may be the same, but is used in many different ways

Robin Rimbaud(Scanner):(the following statements are extracts from the interview I made with him for the Scanning through the waves article)

For my general hearing of other people using modular systems, there is frequently a metallic, quite bright sound that appears, it’s a very particular type of sound, that I’ve only heard through the modular. It’s relatively thin at times as well, I noticed that. This isn’t a generalization, this is just me thinking aloud about about works I’ve heard recently […] but it could be simply people using the same type of modules.

There does appear to be a particular sound that is generic to the modular, the sound I’m sort of describing, but that certainly doesn’t mean everybody sounds like that. The important thing with all creative arts is that you find a voice and that voice becomes you […] but that comes with time.
One has to remember that for many people, modular systems are relatively new, it’s all about discovery, people are very enthusiastic and want to share their discoveries very quickly, they’re not necessarily finished tracks quite frequently, and therefore it can be very deceptive for people to start judging on those things.

I always think of this film Wally [the Pixar Movie ed.] I always think of the closing scene, where there’s these extremely overweight Americans in a theme park. All basically floating their way through, being fed and being told “today the fashionable colour is green, tomorrow the fashionable colour is blue!” and everybody just joins in! What’s so great about the modular system is, that you develop very much your own sound, very much your own voice.
With the modular, there’s no logic, there’s no way I start. Every single time it’s a new conversation and to me that’s thrilling.

Enrico Cosimi:

I don’t think that the modular has a sound of its own; We could talk about “sounds that can more easily be created with a modular architecture than with an integrated one” (due to the complexity of the timbres, or because of the intricate actions required). By itself, a synthesizer, is a synthesizer, is a synthesizer…

Ben “DivKid” Wilson

It’s funny to talk about ‘modular sound’ because if you think of another instrument such as a guitar or a drum kit you think “yeah of course it does.” Then on the other hand you think “well modular is an environment, a blank canvas, a vast sonic landscape”, so you think “it can’t have a sound because it has so many sounds!”

A lot of me really hopes I couldn’t always pick out a modular sound in a production/recording but there’s definitely a few things that guide my ear towards that. Speaking of specific sounds and techniques I’d say there’s a few things for me (of course this is all subjective) such as …

– Sample & Hold modulation
– Wavefolding
– Low Pass Gates (LPGs)

Before anyone thinks I’m stupid I’m well aware all of those things can be in other formats and software versions exist too. Take sample and hold, having that clocked alongside a steady sequence and modulating say a filter or PWM certainly starts to lend itself to modular. I wasn’t using sample and hold much in software before going into modular, nor do I use it on my vintage keyboard synths where I can’t clock it in time with the rest of my music. Wavefolding instantly makes me think Buchla, Serge and Eurorack sonic territory. Again this isn’t something I’d heard much of (or noticed possibly before having experience with it) within software productions and artists that I know that use non-modular hardware didn’t seem to be creating those sounds. Finally Low Pass Gates – again I think Buchla, Serge and Bug Brand (after a stunning performance from tIB with an all Bug Brand set-up at a Modular Meets event last year). Those coloured woody tones conjure up images of modular in my head.

Finally in my mini journey of thoughts on ‘modular sound’ I think it’s the approach in both composition and sound manipulation that make people think something is modular. Modular is so open that it really invites some experimentation, even when making acid basslines I think it urges people to just push past the basics a little bit. The complexity of modulation is a big factor in ‘modular sound’ too, without a doubt. Modulating your modulators through use of VCAs and FM over modulation rates and depths. Speaking of that … audio rate modulation! Another huge thing in modular. It’s endless and my head’s wondering in all directions thinking about it.

To end on, I’d like to say that when Richard Devine said “it sounds modular” in the Behringer DeepMind 12 video I knew exactly what he meant. Even if I like to think that modular is so open it doesn’t have one sound.

If there are sounds that can be more easily created with a modular architecture – be it because of how you interact with it, because of its specific features or because of the “drifting” nature of the instrument – then maybe that’s what makes up its perceived sound and makes it possible to distinguish sounds created with a modular from those made using a keyboard synth or a VA plugin. Or to say it in a different way: maybe it’s not the modular that has a sound, but, because of how it works, it fosters uses and applications which might as well produce very specific and recognizable timbres and structures.

Ben Wilson already gave me a good idea of what could be the “technical” origin of the modular sound, but I wanted to get even deeper, so I talked to somebody who knows his part on modular architectures: Olivier Gillet from Mutable Instruments. He sums up what “classic modular” sounds could be in his opinion:

Sounds created by the usual subtractive signal chain, but with very unusual combinations of building blocks – say a low bit-rate wavetable oscillator processed by a Moog ladder ; or a TB303 square processed by a Wasp filter. The kind of sounds that wouldn’t be out of this world, but would really confuse a synth-spotter.

Sounds typical of “west-coast” synthesis techniques, which, at the exception of Aalto and the new 0-coast, are mostly the prerogative of the modular world – wavefolder sweeps, “bongos” and LPG plucks, out of tune TZFM…

Sounds created with modules that have no keyboard / desktop / plug-in equivalent. Take the example of the Erbeverb, or Rings, or Shapeshifter… What these modules do might or might not be doable with a plug-in, but the fact is that currently, if you want the sounds they make, you need to buy the module.

Sounds and compositions breaking the barriers between sequencing and modulation, modulation and audio generation… Sweeping things continuously from 0.01 Hz to 10kHz. I can think of modules like Tides or the Zorlon Cannon where details in the waveform (or bit sequence) at audio rate morph into modulations then morph into note patterns just by changing a clock rate. Such things are often impossible with desktop synths or plug-ins.

Quirks due to the limited number of modules in a system. For example using a raw oscillator for a bassline (no filter and no “gating” of the notes) because the other VCFs and VCAs in your system are already used for something else. Routing two different melodic lines into the same VCF… Super cheesy percussions done with just one envelope and one VCO or VCF… In a way, more interaction between the different parts of an arrangement because they reuse the same modules – as compared to all the parallel, neatly separated signal chains of a multi-timbral synth or collection of plug-ins.

So yes, probably modulars do have a “sound”, but just as they are complex instruments, everything related to them tends to be complex as well.

This “sound” comes in part from the very nature of the instrument, while the other part is likely to be something more related to how it is used and to various cultural factors. The latter would deserve further analysis, though that lays beyond the scope of this article. Certainly factors like it being relatively new and the trends that develop inside the community are a big part of it.

My answer to the big question about the “modular sound” would be that it is often determined by it not having a specific sound, but more a specific way of operating, which translates in certain types of “sounds”, but we’re probably too much in the middle of the process to be really able to look at it with a clear mind. One thing is certain though, the modular synth, and the type of music, that you can more easily make with it, are starting to re-shape electronic music on various levels.

If you’ve never heard about Scanner then you’ve probably been spending the last 20 years on the un-illuminated side of a far away planet listening to … well … basically nothing. Calling him prolific and multi-talented is almost an understatement. Since the beginning of his career he’s released 60 full-length albums and 23 singles, remixed 71 tracks, collaborated with many important artists, composed uncountable scores for radio, film, television and theatre and worked on numerous installations (source: discogs).

Some time ago he posted the above video on Facebook showing a patch for a new track he was working on. I’ve been a fan of his work for quite some time, and especially appreciate the reductionist approach (to use his own words) of his compositions. Having wanted to interview him for some time, I jumped right in and asked him in a comment if he’d be willing to answer a few questions, which he immediately agreed to. Some time later we met on Skype (on an actual call) and started to chat about his career, his love for modulars and about some projects he’d been working on.
The first thing that strikes you when you talk to Robin Rimbaud, apart from him being a very kind and humble person, is the beautiful timbre of his voice and the calm tone in which he speaks. A perfect reflection of his music, one could say.

What was initially supposed to become a short thing for the Chosen Waves series, turned into a more elaborate “artist portrait” piece, spanning across his first encounter with the modular to one of his latest works: a theatrical score for modular synth and orchestra.

First Encounters

In the last years, Scanner caught the attention of the community due to his many modular tracks, demos and videos. To the casual observer this might appear as being the product of the recent “Eurorack boom”, but his interest in this type of instrument actually dates back to 1993, when he created his second studio album Scanner 2 using an EMS Synthi. He explains the process used to create the album like this: “I was essentially using environmental recordings, the sound around me – this indiscriminate signals that I picked up through the airwaves – and put them trough the Synthi. I was using the synthesizer as a kind of processor, as a very sophisticated fx unit”. Interestingly the person he borrowed the Synthi from, tried to sell it to him for £150, but Rimbaud refused due to lack of space, something he still kicks himself for.

His first contact with the Eurorack world came years later: “I was working in Richmond with a friend of mine, Stephen Vitiello, an American sound artist and composer. He had a Doepfer system and maybe even a Cwejman” he remembers, “I began playing with the system, but I’ve always been a bit of a reductionist, ironically, I’ve always been somebody who tries to use very sophisticated technology but tries to produce something that doesn’t get wrapped up inside the technology. Therefore it still retains the original premise of it, which is to tell the story with sound”. 2 and a half years later, in 2014, Rimbaud and Vitiello went to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for a visiting-artist residency and Vitiello brought his modular synth along. They spent 6 months working with the system, trying out things and crafting sounds. After this experience Rimbaud decided to build his own system and started to buy some modules. “It starts somewhere and doesn’t stop, ever since, the addiction doesn’t stop” he tells me during the interview, I’m sure we can all relate to this somehow.

Love and Hate

Rimbaud’s love for the modular has different reasons, many of which are quite irrational: “Like many things in life I do not fully understand it. For me in some ways that’s a joy, because essentially you can input and output in any way you wish. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. To me there’s a real joy in the unexpected”.

But there’s also the joy of moving away from the omni-present computer screens, though not just for the sake of doing something different, it’s more about gaining a different perspective. The computer distracts him due to all the visual devices, which the machine employs to represent sound. “If I’m working with a choreographer, as a good example, he or she will sit with me, and then watch the movements of the blocks of sound”, this is something he doesn’t find very rewarding, since “you stop listening and you start watching […] so the modular is exciting and stimulating because it’s only about the ears”.

The only thing he doesn’t love about modulars is the way the modules are installed into the cases, which he calls “extremely frustrating” and a “real burden”, since it makes it pretty hard to shift things around (again, I think that’s another thing we can all petty much relate to).

When I ask him if he regards the modular more as an instrument or as a sound-design machine, he replies that he finds definitions “almost impossible anyway”. “It’s a machine, a tool that offers sonic possibilities” he carries on “Those possibilities for myself can lead to very musical means, and they can lead to very sound-design means. I use it for treatment of sounds, I use it also as an FX unit, so it’s a very versatile system and I think I still call it a system in a way. It’s not one and it’s not the other, and that’s to its advantage, that one cannot say that it’s that one thing”.

Telling The Story

In his studio, Rimbaud has 7 cases full of modules, he explains: “I have a Verbos system in one case, I have a Mutable Instruments system in another case and I’m drawn to them for different reasons”. Despite owning a big modular, he likes to keep things as simple as possible. He seem to be interested less in the technology than in what you can do with it, or as he points out quite fittingly: “What is important … for lack of a better word … the story needs to be told, the story you are telling with the sounds needs to come true, it doesn’t need to be lost in translation”. This search for the essential and the focus on the “story” is probably the central element of all of his work.

Later on he tells me how he read about the band Muse going back to their roots with their most recent album: “they said they had enough of these grandiose, elaborate productions, so it’s essentially just drums, bass, guitar and vocals and they said like: ‘here’s a screen grab of one of our tracks’, it was 96 tracks! 96 channels on one track!” and he thought “back to the basics, I see!”.

Scanner is certainly not interested in adding, more in removing. “I try to remove as much as possible” he compares it to a house of cards: “I try to remove as many cards as possible but still keep the house standing and see if the story can still be told, if the narrative is strong enough, it doesn’t need anything more”.

He links this approach back to his early beginnings: “I began using a tape recorder” he tells me “which gave me a way of working with sound in a linear fashion, by which I mean: I could record you playing the guitar or the piano, and I could pause the tape and record the sound of traffic passing outside, then I could pause and record me singing and so on”. His first tape recorder didn’t have multiple channels, so you could only arrange sounds in sequence. Later, he got a two-track reel-to-reel recorder, which opened up a whole new set of possibilities: “Suddenly I could tell a story, I could make one sound talk to another sound”. The next level was a Fostex 4-track tape machine, which he also used for his first albums, finally he could bounce tracks, combining them, thus freeing up channels to record even more material. Still these machines would pose limitations on what you could do and how fast you could do it. In contrast with them, a modern computer will offer almost infinite channels, bringing along the risk of getting “completely lost in that”.

Somehow this way of working has defined the Scanner sound in such a deep way, that even if he could make extremely elaborate patches with hundreds of sounds going on, he just doesn’t seem to be interested in it. “I clear up the cables after every time I record it” he tells me in the interview “I don’t keep them at all”. He doesn’t even take notes, and just keeps the recordings of what he produced with the patch. The reason for this is very simple: “I’m somebody who retains the idea of this being about the moment”.

Sometimes this approach isn’t fully understood by other modular synth enthusiasts. Somebody recently commented one of his videos saying: “I enjoyed this but, you’re not doing much with such a big system”. Rimbaud, doesn’t understand this: “What do you want? Do you want a really big sound? You want lots and lots of layers all rolling around with one another?”. He doesn’t have a problem with other people working like this, “Because some people – Richard Devine is a good example – can do this extraordinarily well” he tells me, but then he adds: “That’s just not my voice, that’s not the way I work”.

Tomorrow

Rambert Dance is Britain’s most important contemporary dance company and Tomorrow is their 25-minute take on Shakespear’s classic Macbeth, or, as the official text says: “inhabits the dark and dangerous world of Macbeth” (source: www.rambert.org.uk).

Rimbaud was first contacted by Lucy Guerin, an Australian choreographer, to work on the score for the play: “We were both commissioned to make this piece for Rambert Dance in London … and what she was looking for in our very early conversations were pulses.” The choreographer wanted a series of regular pulses, that would stretch throughout the duration of the piece. Rimbaud could have done this digitally, but instead chose to go a more analogue route: “For this I used the modular system, because I could use clock dividers, I could use filters and I could make this thing feel really organic” he says, then explains the concept in more detail: “It’s a very organic process, the time slips, it gets faster, it gets slower, things move in a very real way, but the modular is going to lock it”. When he chooses to use one thing or the other, it’s usually about it being joyful, as he explains: “I use this word repeatedly, but life and work needs to be about a sense of joy, you need to enjoy this, it must not feel like work always!”. The pulses were just one aspect of the music, there was also an invitation to work with live players, with an orchestra. He tells me in the interview: “I wrote a series of pieces, about 6 pieces, and worked with an arranger called Quinta back in London and a young woman composer, who’s a great violinist, who ended playing violin and also a saw”. The live-played, amplified saw and wine glasses in the score, were chosen to reproduce some of the electronic sounds created by Rimbaud for the composition.

Above: one of Rimbaud’s sketches for Tomorrow.

These two layers, the pulses and the orchestra, are “two completely different things” as Rimbaud explains to me, “There’s the orchestral piece and there’s the modular piece. There is no ‘click track’ and that was very deliberate, because having worked with live players before, they have always expressed how frustrating and unrewarding it is to play to a ‘click track'”. This dualism in the composition also perfectly fits the nature of Rambert Dance’s performance, which revolves around the stage being physically divided in two sections and dancers being dressed in either black or white. Rimbaud explains further: “It was clear in my directions to the orchestra that you begin at the same time as the modular system and you finish at the same time, but you don’t listen to each other, you don’t listen to the tempo”

These layers were kept separate until almost the very end, the orchestra was just provided with the starting point of what the pulse track was about to become: “I set a whole series of pulses going, I spent a few days making them on the modular and just interlocked them, ran them trough different filters and treated them in different ways; They rehearsed to just the pulses”. Only about a week before the première, once everything had been written, arranged and rehearsed, these two layers came together and they could finally hear both things happening at once: the live players and the electronics. Rimbaud remembers the moment very fondly: “It was really beautiful! This offered them a great freedom in a way”.

Scoring for the Modular

In the end I ask him if he could imagine scoring a piece for the modular just as he would do for an orchestra or a traditional solo instrument. He finds it an “intriguing challenge” and adds: “it would be possible in some ways to score it, to write down developments, filters, changes, these kind of things, but rather like a lot of very exploratory scores, a lot of the actual responsibility, would then rely very much on the performer themselves”. Which he thinks would be interesting, because the actual idea of reproducing something doesn’t interest him at all. “I mean … from the very start of my professional career” he points out “the last thing I ever wanted to do was to release records and then perform those tunes live. Even when I was at the stage of playing lots of concerts and releasing CDs, I very rarely played the show and played all my tracks off the CDs”. From this perspective the idea of scoring a piece for modular synth would be a great challenge, but also a rewarding one: “it would be interesting because it would allow a performer to bring also their voice, their interpretation, their history, their knowledge to this performance”.

Let’s see, maybe I have planted a seed in his mind, and we will indeed see a piece for modular synth scored by him in the near future.

Horizontalpitch: First of all, tell us a little bit about Jericho. What is Jericho and how long have you been active with this moniker?

Jericho: My real name is Sebastian Steininger. I’m from Nuremberg, southern Germany. There is no fancy story behind my artist name Jericho. If I remember right, I woke up one day, had this name in my mind and stuck to it for almost 18 years.

HP: What’s your musical background, when and how did you realise that you wanted to make electronic music?

J: My musical journey and fascination for electronic music started during the mid-1990s when I discovered bands like Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack or The Prodigy. End of the 1990s Drum&Bass grabbed my attention and I decided to create my own music. Quite active as DJ and producer with a couple of releases I became part of the rising Drum&Bass scene in Germany. Over the years I enjoyed making slower and organic sounding music more and more. I added a guitar, a banjo and some guitar pedals to my arsenal. Early 2015 I discovered the Eurorack format by watching a guy on Youtube twisting knobs on a Make Noise Phonogene module. One week later the first case was ready to be filled and my modular journey started.

[above: a little bonus modular jam video from Jericho]

HP: Let’s talk about the process, how did you use the modular for this track? Is your approach more gestural and inspired by the moment, or do you plan things ahead and then try to (re)create them on the machine in a programmatic way?

J: Seahorse Lullaby is part of a 4-track EP called “Modular Diary” released on Infiltrator Records. The idea of a Modular Diary was born when I decided to capture my modular compositions and experiments.
For this track I started with a little music box melody which was created in the DAW. The recording gets processed with the Qu-bit Nebulae sampler. I like how the Nebulae is treating the original sound source. It adds this certain tape-like and lofi character to almost everything. By manipulating the start and end point of the loop with envelopes and random control voltages, I came up with this endlessly evolving melody. I’ve added even more random quantized voices with the Mutable Instruments Braids and the Intellijel Shapeshifter to give the melody more tension and variety.
I start patching like this quite often. I call it ‘controlled randomness’. Once this environment is set up, I’m adding more static layers. This allows me to perform and evolve the idea without loosing the main structure of the patch. Now the fun part begins. Modules like the Pressure Points, attenuators and filters with big knobs are great for injecting controlled changes to the patch. You can’t predict and control everything during the recording. There’s too many variables, which are influencing each other. These ‘happy’ and unpredictable accidents are often the most interesting parts after hitting the stop button.

HP: There is a certain bright and uplifting mood in your tracks, but you don’t resort to easy melodies or other more conventional musical devices. What’s your approach to composing music for the modular synth?

J: I like how you describe the mood in my tracks. Most of the time it is this kind of duality between darkness and brightness which I want to express with my music. It’s a complex inner feeling which can’t be resolved by too ‘easy’ melodies.
Composing music with a modular synth gave me opportunity to break out of the typical loop-based composition of a DAW. There are dozens of unfinished snippets from my pre-modular era. Probably I’m bored too fast when it comes to the arrangement with a computer. Working with a modular synth combines all this in a musical way. There is no clear red line between designing a sound and putting it into context with other voices in my patches.
What I really enjoy is the way the modular forces me to focus more on hearing than on watching a computer screen and trying to translate that to what I’m actually hearing. There can be so much detail in a single sound, if you listen carefully.

Jericho’s system. Courtesy of Jericho.

HP: When making music, do you regard the modular more as an instrument that you play or as a sound-design machine? What makes more sense to you, “less is more”, or “just give me that wall of modules”?

J: It’s both. For me the beauty of modular relies in the interaction and non-linearity. Not only between me and the instrument, but also between all those modules and ideas. In a computer-based DAW, every track remains isolated. Of course you can create musical and timed relations on the time axis. It will be still linear and might sound digitally quantized unless you put a lot of work into automations. One of my biggest ‘aha’ moments, when I started with modular synthesis, was the realisation of dividing trigger signals from pitch information. The concept of midi composition for example: if you hit a certain key you will hear that tone for the time you are holding the key down (apart from envelopes). This concept was burned in my head for so long. Going Modular opened a whole new field of creativity for me.
When I started back in 2015, I expanded quite quickly to 12U. Now I’m at 21U, I have stopped adding more rows and have entered the bazar at Muffwiggler’s and Facebook. There are so many modules in my system which still need to be fully discovered. I think a lot of people who started with modular are going this route. You need to get used to what you have in order to know what really is needed for achieving your sound.

HP: Do you perform these tracks live as well, and if so, how do you approach a live set with the modular?

J: All my modular-based tracks are live multi-track recordings. The drums are usually made inside the DAW. The performance of the recording is always live and a mixture of mainly modular and some DAW-based sounds. Currently I’m planning a mobile setup for live sets outside the studio environment.

HP: Plans for the future? Are you working on a new album/EP?

J: I do avoid making too big plans at the moment and will continue with the idea of my Modular Diary. Collaborating with other musicians in a live context however would be something I’m really interested in.

#INSTANTBONER are Joe Steyer and Matthias Millhoff, two musicians and producers from Berlin, Kreuzberg. They believe that modular systems and improvised electronic music are a perfect fit for the dance floor. The duo works with a combination of modular synth (for melody, basslines, drones and vocals; this is Matthias’ part) and a computer-based drum machine (Joe’s part) and prefers to create their music live on stage than in the protected context of the studio.

On the 1st of May 2015 we had our first official show in Berlin. In the following year we worked a lot on our setup and tried to make it as flexible as possible but also establish a significant sound within this flexibility. We were never trying to work on tracks in the studio, we decided from the beginning that we want to be a real live act, create everything on stage, with the pressure to deliver something to the people. We tried to play as much as possible, mainly around Germany. This year we played again on the 1st of May at the same spot and this time it was streamed by Be-At TV [ed. link is below]. It’s really fun for us to play a set, the vibe and the venue influences us from set to set and we try to create something special every time.

Their video Instantmotion was born as a way to explain what they do in their live shows.

[…] we got many questions about what we actually do with all these knobs, lights and cables. To give some answers we put together a short video which we believe speaks for itself.

For those who are interested in knowing the technical specifics behind this video:

[…] The sound you experience is actually the simple patch you see in the video. Only the Hexinverter Mutant Bassdrum is not visible but is triggered by the very first cable plugged into Pamelas Workout. The hihat is a noise from the FMVDO with MakeNoise Maths envelope 2, the bassline is played by the Doepfer Dark Time into Verbos Complex Oscillator and Manhattan Analog SVVCF with the TipTop Z4000 Envelope. The Pad is the mighty OP-1 shaped by Maths envelope 1. Modulation of bassline and hihat are coming from the QuadLFO. The Reverb is Z-DSP with the Valhalla-Card and is also modulated by the QuadLFO. And finally the Mixer/VCA is the ADDAC Quintet Mixing Console.

This time, the new cover photo is one of my own creations. This shot was originally intended to be used for one my band’s gig posters (www.kvsu.net), but then we went with an illustrated version instead. Since I really like this photo and the Pikachu is holding some patchcables (plus, there’s a modular in the background, though you can hardly tell), I decided to use it for our blogzine instead.

This bent Pikachu was made by the great Japanese circuit bender Kaseo.

Gattobus: My real name is Gianni Proietti. I was looking for an original user name when I registered my Youtube account, years ago, and because of my love for Miyazaki’s movies, I chose the Italian translation for “neko-basu” that is gattobus. I started making videos just for fun, every night after dinner… My account became famous thanks to some videos of me covering Daft Punk and Jean Michel Jarre songs. At that time I was working in a musical instruments store, so I was lucky enough to have all the coolest instruments on the market. Music has always been a very important aspect of my life, synthesizers are my passion since I was a teenager. I like to play and making new sounds with them and over time I found myself studying every aspect of sound synthesis. Now I’m working as a teacher in a music school, I teach how to make sounds and how to properly use a synthesizer. I also have a personal studio, I compose original music and create sound libraries. Sometimes I am also hired as demonstrator for important brands, so I consider myself very lucky because I’ve found the perfect fit between passion and work!

HP: I remember some of your older videos being one of the reasons I got some wonderful gear. What led you to eurorack?

GB: Well, it all happened recently. Until 5-6 years ago, modulars were considered tools for geeks or DIY technicians. Those people were merely considered as musicians. I had a couple of friends, back then, that already had a case full with strange DIY modules. I was fascinated but never had the guts (not to mention the money) to dive into that world… since recently, of course. I have always been fascinated by Don Buchla modulars… so I started looking for the right eurorack modules to recreate that particular kind of sound, using the west coast style approach to synthesis. I put down on paper a sketch of how I would like it to be and then… with big efforts and lots of money I began assembling my own eurorack modular system.

HP: would you care to tell our readers something about the Italian modular scene?

GB: There are a lot of people in Italy that are making music with modulars actually and the community is still growing. I think that we are only at the beginning. There is a lot of curiosity around this kind of instruments, maybe because they give you more freedom than any other synth. People who enter this world can feel for the first time the incredible sensation of sailing in uncharted waters… but at their own risk, I would say! New startups are also emerging from this scene here in Italy, producing great modules and cases, like my friend Davide Mancini’s Soundmachines or Simone Fabbri’s FrapTools. Last year I had the chance to perform at Acousmatiq, a very important electronic music festival in Ancona where I shared the stage with other great artists from my country. It was a great experience. We all performed together with our modulars and it was really great fun. We also had a warm response from the audience, they probably were fascinated by our strange blinking instruments and by the weird sounds. There is a sort of special empathy among the musicians that play modulars… we may have different approaches, but we all share the same passion and the same madness!

Acousmatiq 2015 – photo by Paolo Bragaglia

HP: Let’s go back to “Escape (from the dream)”: would you care to elaborate what’s going on here?

GB:Well… a lot of things are going on here… Essentially, it’s a four bar loop where the bass part and the harmony are driven by a sequencer (Makenoise René). The bass sound is generated from the Makenoise DPO that goes through the Optomix, a Vactrol controlled VCA that I use to recreate the “Buchlesque” classic sound. The other synth lines come from the dual oscillator (Verbos Complex Oscillator) passing through the TB Triple wave folder and a waveguide delay (CG1022). The main lead, that I’m playing with Makenoise Pressure Points, is generated by the Mutable instruments Braids Oscillator in Wavetable mode, passing through the MMG filter. There are a lot of other modulations going on, that involve a random generator (SSF Ultra Random Analog) and a Cwejman D-LFO, but I don’t remember how I patched them exactly, sorry… A modular patch is like a mandala, at the end of the performance you have to un-patch and destroy everything you’ve created. Every patch has a life on its own, it’s impossible to keep on mind all the connections because they are part of a structure that was born from a specific idea so it’s always different.

HP: what’s your view on the subtle interplay between programming, patching and performing?

GB: This aspects are always linked each other to me. When I create a patch I already have the basic structure of it in my mind. I know what I want to do, I know the direction where I want to go and the way I want to perform the song. This kind of approach of course requires a deep knowledge of the modules in my rack. Sometimes it happens that the results are slightly different from what I thought, sometimes other ideas jump in my mind while patching, but in the end I always reach the goal I have in my mind… if I don’t run out of cables first!

Photo by Gianni Proietti

HP: What’s your usual approach to sound creation? Do your dreams become a patch or is it the other way round?

GB: Sometimes really happened to me, to dream at night of a particular sound or to imagine experimenting a particular kind of modulation I’ve never tried before… then I run in my studio in the middle of the night, trying to put it into practice. Sometimes something good comes out, sometimes not… I’ve spent a lot of time together with my modular system, which is not so big, it’s only four rows of 84HP. Surely I haven’t tried everything’s possible with it, this kind of systems are very deep indeed. Sometimes I stop experimenting and I find myself following the same steps to recreate a particular sound that I use the most. It depends from my inspiration and from what I want to achieve. There is always an idea behind a song or a particular project. For me, starting a patch without an idea or a particular inspiration, is like diving into the ocean, I risk of loosing myself.

HP: who and what influences your music?

GB: I always try to convey my emotions through the sounds and through my melodies. My music is never calculated, it’s always generated from my feelings. Sometimes it takes months before I find the right mood, sometimes I record three songs in three days. It depends from my inspiration, I cannot force myself to play even if I would like to… sometimes it’s frustrating, but the secret is to have patience and to let everything flow as it should. Of course there are artist that influence my way of making music. Alessandro Cortini is one of them, with his melodic approach to modulars, but also the duo Reznor/Ross with their incredible dark atmospheres. I love Brian Eno’s ambient works, Benge, Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Knife, Bjork, Sigur Ros. Sometimes I also find inspiration also in other music genres. Pat Metheny is one of my favorite musicians ever and I also like Japanese anime songs. Yoko Kanno is a musician that has deeply touched my heart and influenced my way of making music.

HP: Do you have any “desert island-module”? (Yes, I know…an island with a power grid…)

GB: Well… not really. I think of all the modules together as they were a single instrument. They complement each other because they are part of the same idea that I had in mind when I began assembling my modular system. Of course there are modules to which I am particularly fond of, like the CG 1022 Delay, the TB Triple Wave Folder, the Makenoise Optomix, Maths or RT Stoicheia. At the moment I think I have found the perfect balance in my system, so I’m very happy with it.

GB: My approach to the modular world is to use modules to build a specific instrument. I will never have a wall of modules. I would end up loosing myself and not being able to focus. I’d rather prefer to have a lot of little systems, each with their own concept and approach. Over time I realized that I’m more productive and creative when I focus myself on a specific instrument instead of using lots of stuff all together. A modular system, or a synthesizer, for me, is essentially an instrument but it’s also a sound design tool, because when I think of an emotion, I try to describe it using both melody and sound.

HP: What’s coming in Gattobus’s future?

GB: Speaking about my job, a lot of possibilities are opening up to me lately, but it’s hard to tell. I live day by day. For my music I don’t have particular projects but I do always have big dreams. Of course I will never stop playing and making sounds. If that would happen, I will be dead. If you want, you can keep on following me on my channels, Youtube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp. I will keep on delivering you what’s in my heart, no doubt and I will keep on getting excited playing and programming my beloved synths. Forever and ever. See you soon!

Gattobus Live

]]>http://www.horizontalpitch.com/2016/06/chosen-waves-gattobus/feed/2Tune your patchcables to stringshttp://www.horizontalpitch.com/2016/06/tune-your-patchcables-to-strings/
Sat, 11 Jun 2016 12:25:19 +0000http://www.horizontalpitch.com/?p=1535“I improvise when I play on my own, so I see where the patch I have made takes me,” says Stefan Paul Goetsch from his home studio in Berlin. Far from being an uncommon utterance among the modular crowd, whether it be jamming at home or taking a portable modular system to a live venue, this sentence has a certain gravitas coming from Mr Goetsch who has put in years of fertile music work between his bedroom producer days and his current status as a house-hold name behind Germany’s various theatre stage curtains. For some of us the modular system is a tool, for others it’s a way of expression and for others yet, it’s a way of thinking.

Horizontalpitch: Have you been working in theatre productions for a long time ?

Stefan Goetsch: For quite some time now. I started composing for theatre at the University in Hamburg in 2000, where I became composer in residence of a student theatre group. In the beginning I did everything, writing the music, setting up the PA, playing the cues for the show. Later I performed on stage, too. That was a good trial and error education into composing for this medium. During my time there I got to know some directors who were just starting out and I worked with a few, doing off-theatre, academy productions and festivals. The contacts I made there led on to paid work in the theatre world after I left University in 2006. It took about three years before I could make this my sole income source and I quit my job as a marketing/graphics guy for a studio equipment reseller in 2009.

HP: Were you using synthesizers from early on ?

SG: My first synth when I was 15 was the FM and white noise from a radio, which I combined with piano on cassette recordings. From then on synths have been a huge part of my music life. So for writing for the theatre, they always had a place. I remember using a lot of Crusher-X, a granular software synth, re-assembling acoustic recordings. But you can’t score every play with a synth, so I adapt to what the play needs – sometimes its an accordion, sometimes acapella songs, sometimes live-foley – its a huge playground and I love the diversity.

HP: You mentioned cassette recordings; from your work so far it seems that tape plays an equal part in your compositions. Is it something you still use ?

SG: I love tape in all its forms! Recording to tape give every track a “finished” feeling, which is in these days of total recall is very desirable. As theatre work is much less detail driven and more about the big ballsy move than film work, recording to tape and saying “this is it” is very productive. When I am at home I record live to a nice Telefunken M15 1/4″, when on site I use a Marantz PMD222 cassette recorder or if I feel like heavy lifting a Nagra III. In the modular I use Gieskes fantastic 317VCA module, that drives a walkman 1V/O. My last album Ashes was actually recorded all on tape, and the one I am working now on, too.

HP: So you don’t sit in front for the computer to produce tracks, it’s just layering on tape ? Isn’t that an unending process with the chaos that is modular, or do you record multi-phonically ?

SG: It’s much quicker! With the tape I don’t layer – I make a patch, mix it on an analog desk and start rehearsing the performance. Then I record it to a mono or stereo tape machine, depending on the sound I am after. The resulting recording I edit in the DAW and maybe overdub some stuff I find necessary. I have Silent Way, so I can switch to precision mode and record track by track with modular, if I need to. But the less mouse-clicks, the better. This way I can make four tracks in two days.

HP: That’s quite prolific, especially for a modular setup, which makes me think you’ve spent a lot of time fine tuning the process. Would you consider the modular to be your go-to instrument ?

SG: For everything except songwriting, it is. I still prefer the piano for that.

HP: You do have a signature sound though, even when writing songs, or when writing for an orchestra like on your latest production. Can you tell us more about your work on “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari” ?

SG: I did use many of the processes I use when I compose for electronic music for Caligari, even if the final instrument is an orchestra. There are even two pieces that started out as all modular versions, which I had translated to orchestra by a rather talented orchestrator.

Reading the resulting score and seeing that this way of composing can work, I set out writing the rest. Usually I would think of what the scene requires, patch something up on the modular that gives me an idea, record that in in Ableton Live and use Melodyne to translate the audio to midi. That gave me whole mess of notes from which I subtracted the ones I liked. When I had the main theme going, I made a patch in Numerolgy that works the same way I sequence in the modular, by mixing CVs. I ran these to various virtual orchestra instruments until I found a synergy between instruments I liked.

I then recorded the Numerology output and refined by manually dragging notes around. I can’t really remember much about how I wrote each piece, as I got into a very nice flow quickly, same as when patching. I did not forsake the piano, the main theme is based on the first piano idea I had when I talked with the director. In the end, the orchestrator translated all the midi files I sent him into a beautiful and very readable score that the orchestra performed admirably from the get go.

From Stefan Goetsch: “the setup I used to write it in the apartment in Neuss”

HP: Your modular music is mostly pulse driven and similarly the pieces you wrote for the Caligari play contain loops and polyrhythms (or to be more precise: syncopation). How did the orchestra cope with structures translated from an electronic music starting point ?

SG: Overall, rather well! The conductor, Wouter Padberg, was fantastic in getting everything together. He understand what I was after. It took a few rehearsals until everybody understood what I actually meant with certain parts. Some instruments are interlocked so tightly that they don’t make much sense on their own, but sound exciting when together played with their counterpart. So you need time together to get that working. With the few rehearsals we had and the daily rotation of players I was very happy to hear it all come together at the opening. I do see a lot of ways I can improve my writing and am already busy in my head putting that together.

HP: It is probably not that common to find people who have had the chance to work both with an orchestra and a modular system. Seeing as the majority of music produced for either “sound medium” is different, would you say there’s any correlation between the two? There have been a few tries to score modular music, but the results fall mainly under the graphical notation category. Do you think there is any room for scoring modular music, or … wiggling an orchestra ?

SG: I put modular and orchestra together in Caligari, but it was recordings of the modular with the conductor getting a click track when both played together. I personally would have loved to perform with the modular and the orchestra, but that was impossible due to schedule and distance. Else, its all in the patch and what you want to achieve. When I played modular live with a singer at a performance in Bremen I had different sections for each part of the play, each song. That worked fine, but I had to leave the modular patched there and not change a thing. Recalling would have been difficult, as the singer relied on me playing exactly.

Scoring so someone else can read it would be a very difficult thing. It could be a cool experiment for someone like Make Noise to sent their Shared System around with a score and call for interpretations. I would love to hear that!

HP: So when you perform with the modular do you try to be exact ? Speaking of which, in what other projects do you use the modular, apart from theatre and your own records ?

SG: I improvise when I play on my own, so I see where the patch I have made takes me. When I played Superbooth, I was very happy about the sound in the room, as I could dial in bass frequencies with great accuracy and effect. I ended up performing way slower and deeper than I had planned. When I play with my band Kudelski, I process recorded modular loops with the modular and jam on the Metasonix D1000 drummachine, as that is rehearsed like regular songs.

HP: What do you use to playback your modular loops and then reprocess them through your modular system ? Loop modules seem to be the latest gap in the Eurorack format and there is a lot of shoulder bashing to see who makes the end-all-be-all looper. Do you have any favourites in that area or do you use external devices ? You mentioned the Gieskes 317VCA …

SG: I use a laptop and Ableton Live, as I can sent CV from Silent Way, too. This opens up timed modulations and replaying of pre-recorded sequences, especially for drums. I like to keep those live and not recorded so I can tune them to the PA and room. The D1000 is great for that purpose.

HP: Any other device, external or modular, that you’re equally fond of and that has changed the way you patch, or the way you interact with the modular ?

SG: Ciat Lonbarde Cocoquantus – this dual delay/looper has turned my world around a bit. I have recreated the whole of Caligari by using snippets from the rehearsals and processed them with it.

It has wonderful broken sound to it, warm an crisp. When I perform as Hainbach its my main mixer for modular and whatever else I bring. Its like a workstation for abstrakt electronic music.

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Stefan Goetsch’s solo work, including his stable modular output, can be found under his Hainbach moniker . His scoring work is readily accessible on his professional page. His latest Hainbach album will be coming later this summer and is said to be more upbeat than his latest produce. There is also an ambient record on the works which should be available late fall.